Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 28, 2025
The scream had scarcely gone from Keok's lips when Alan was at the top of the ladder, calling her. She came to him through the stark blackness of the room, sobbing that Sokwenna was hit; and Alan reached out and seized her, and dragged her down, and placed her with Nawadlook and Mary Standish.
A second time she had spoken his name, softly and without embarrassment. With her nervous fingers tying and untying the two corners of a little handkerchief in her lap, she went on, after a moment of silence in which the ticking of Keok's clock seemed tense and loud. "When I was seventeen, Grandfather Standish died.
He heard Tautuk's voice, calling to Keok away over near the reindeer corral, and he heard clearly Keok's merry laughter as she answered him. A gray-cheeked thrush flew up to the roof of Sokwenna's cabin and began to sing. It was as if these things had come as a message to both of them, relieving a tension, and significant of the beauty and glory and undying hope of life.
Not until later, when he stood alone with Stampede Smith in the edge of the cottonwoods, and the three girls were riding deer back over the tundra in the direction of the Range, did the sea of questions which had been gathering begin to sweep upon him. It had been Keok's suggestion that she and Mary and Nawadlook ride on ahead, and he had noticed how quickly Mary Standish had caught at the idea.
He took them up in his hands and laughed when he saw how she had misjudged the size of his feet. In the living-room he sat down and lighted his pipe, observing that Keok's phonograph, which had been there earlier in the evening, was gone.
He sat down, and with his head bowed over it took one of the limp, little hands that lay in Mary Standish's lap. The warmth had gone out of it. It was cold and lifeless. He caressed it gently and held it between his brown, muscular hands, staring at it, and yet seeing nothing in particular. It was only the ticking of Keok's clock that broke the silence for a time.
And he had never thought of Keok's pretty mouth as he was thinking of the girl's opposite him. He shifted uneasily and was glad Mary Standish did not look at him in these moments of mental unbalance. When he left the table, the girl scarcely noticed his going. It was as if she had used him and then calmly shuttled him out of the way. He tried to laugh as he hunted up Stampede Smith.
This day was the Fourth of July, and someone in the cottonwoods was shooting firecrackers! A smile softened his lips. He recalled Keok's mischievous habit of lighting a whole bunch at one time, for which apparent wastefulness Nawadlook never failed to scold her.
But I didn't find out what she was until this evening, when I returned Keok's music machine to their cabin. I've been trying to make up my mind what to do ever since. If she was only making her get-away from the States, a pickpocket, a coiner, somebody's bunco pigeon chased by the police almost anything we could forgive her. Even if she'd shot up somebody " He made a gesture of despair.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking